Illiterate man in jail for defiling ‘sacred text’

Will be prosecuted if intention can be established, says SHO.

ZAHIR PEER:

A barber here has been sent to jail for two weeks after he was arrested on charge of defiling pages of the Holy Quran.

Rafiq Ahmed, a resident of Basti Ghazipur, was accused by Abdur Rasheed, the prayer leader of Ayesha Siddiqa Masjid, of using pages of the Holy Quran to clean some mirrors at his shop. Talking to The Express Tribune on Wednesday, Ahmed said that he was illiterate and had no idea whether the papers he had used had verses of the Holy Quran written on them.

He said the prayer leader and several residents of the area – including Abdur Rahim and Riaz Ahmed – as well as Zahir Peer station house officer, Mehr Nasir, had come to his shop on Wednesday and taken him to the police station. He said they had confiscated the papers he had been using for cleaning.

At police station, he said, he was told that he had been accused of blasphemy and would be prosecuted.

Ahmed was produced before the additional sessions judge in Khanpur and sent to Khanpur jail.

Rasheed, the complainant, told the Tribune that he was approached by several people on Tuesday with the complaint. He said he accompanied them and the police to the barber’s shop and recovered the papers.

Rasheed said Ahmed’s claim that he was illiterate and had no knowledge of what the papers contained was irrelavant. “Anyone can just commit blasphemy and then say that he is illiterate.

That does not mean that you let them go,” he said.

Zahir Peer SHO Nasir said further action against the accused would depend on what investigators could find out. He said if intention to blaspheme was established during the investigations, the man would be prosecuted under Section 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code. “If found guilty of defiling the Holy Quran, the man may be imprisoned for life,” he said.

Ahmed’s wife and children had fled the town and were not available for comment. His distant relatives refused comment. His shop in Ghaziabad Basti was locked up.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 8^th, 2011.